American Tower Corp (ATC) is in talks with Tata Teleservices Ltd to acquire its remaining 13% stake in ATC Telecom Infrastructure Pvt. Ltd, The Press Trust of India reported said.
The deal is likely to valued at Rs 2,500 crore ($357 million at current exchange rates), the news agency reported, citing a source it didn't identify.
Separately, The Economic Times said, citing two people with direct knowledge of the matter, that ATC has bought Tata's stake in the telecom tower company.
Both reports said Tata Teleservices had an option to sell its remaining stake to ATC in the fiscal year that began this month.
After this deal, ATC will hold a 90% stake in the tower company. The remaining stake is held by Macquarie-controlled funds, the reports said.
In 2015, American Tower had first acquired a 51% stake in the telecom tower company then known as Viom Networks Ltd from Tata Teleservices and others for Rs 7,635 crore.
The US company subsequently renamed the Indian tower company as ATC Telecom Infrastructure.
In October 2018, Tata Teleservices agreed to sell half of its 26% stake and IDFC divested its 2% stake in ATC Telecom to the US company for Rs 2,940 crore.
ATC Telecom Infrastructure is the second-largest telecom tower company in India with around 78,000 towers. It trails the company that is being created after the merger of Indus Towers Ltd and Bharti Infratel Ltd.
Tata Teleservices is separately in the final stages of selling its consumer mobility business to Bharti Airtel Ltd.
In another development, US-based impact investment foundation Gray Matters Capital has invested Rs 1 crore (around Rs 142 crore at current exchange rates) in vernacular language-based technical learning platform Guvi via its edLABS initiative, the startup said in a statement.
Guvi, or Grab Ur Vernacular Imprint, simplifies technical concepts through its bite-sized vernacular video. It provides courses around a slew of technical subjects including python, machine learning, big data, java, C, C++, MongoDB and more in the form of videos in vernacular languages such as Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Hindi, Marathi and Bengali.
The startup was founded by a trio of former Paypal executives Arun Prakash, Balamurugan SP and M Sridevi and was incubated at IIT-Madras' Rural Technology and Business Incubator (RTBI).
“The edLABS funding gives us the required fillip to reach our target of 1 million coders by 2020. This will entail tapping into more partners such as engineering colleges in geographies beyond Tamil Nadu as well as swelling up corporate recruiters on one front and keeping our video library updated and in sync with the ever-changing trends in technology on the other,” Balamurugan said.
